Canada has confirmed a new case of mad cow disease in central Manitoba province, the country's sixth since 2003.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said Tuesday no parts of the cow's carcass entered human or animal feed systems. The agency also said the cow was born before 1997, when Canada introduced regulations on animal feed aimed at fighting the disease.
Agency officials said an investigation has been launched to determine where the infected cow was born and identify other animals that may have eaten from the same feed.
Last month, Ottawa announced plans to expand a 1997 ban on feeding cattle parts to cows in hopes of completely eliminating mad cow disease in Canada.
Known as mad cow disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy causes brain wasting, eventually causing cattle to lose the ability to walk or stand.
Humans can get variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of the disease, by eating the meat of cattle with mad cow disease.
At least 160 people have died of the disease, mainly in Britain, since the first case was confirmed there in 1996.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.